Distortion (Moonlighters Series)

by Blackstock, Terri

  “They brought their records. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just wondering if he . . . if he ever did things that didn’t seem right . . . like prescribing drugs to people who didn’t really have back problems?”

  Tracy hesitated. “Do you think that had something to do with his murder?”

  Juliet looked at her sisters. “We’re just trying to consider everything.”

  “But I thought they arrested the guy.”

  “They did. We just aren’t sure he was acting alone.”

  Tracy seemed to be processing that. Her voice wobbled as she answered. “Juliet, we were a very busy office. But Bob was a good doctor. I don’t think he’d ever do anything illegal.”

  Juliet touched her chest, and tears rimmed her eyes. “Thank you, Tracy. I needed to hear that.”

  When Juliet hung up, she stared at her sisters, her mouth trembling. “It’s something.”

  Cathy came across the bed and pulled her into a hug. Holly joined them, and they sat in the middle of the bed. Juliet clung to them, unable to stand what she knew was coming.

  Finally, Juliet said, “We should go look through his office.”

  “Won’t the police do that?” Holly asked.

  “Probably, but I don’t want to wait until they do. I need to go now. They haven’t told me it’s off limits.”

  “I’ll call Michael and ask him to meet us there,” Cathy said.

  CHAPTER 18

  Juliet’s hands trembled as she tried to use Bob’s key to open the door of his medical clinic. Michael, who had met them there, took the keys from her hand. “Here, let me.” He turned the key easily and the door opened.

  Juliet stepped into the waiting room. It was clean, chairs lined up neatly, magazines stacked. She had helped decorate the room in a soft, pale gray, with black chairs and couches, art on the walls. She turned to the keypad on the wall. “Something’s wrong. The security system isn’t armed. It should beep when we come in until we type in the code.”

  “Maybe the staff forgot to arm it,” Cathy said.

  Frowning, Juliet crossed the room to the receptionist’s desk.

  She gasped. The office behind the desk looked like a tornado had hit it. File drawers were open, papers on the floor. The computer that had been on the receptionist’s desk was missing, leaving only a tangle of cords.

  “Someone beat us here,” Michael said. “Stay back.”

  Juliet and her sisters waited, holding each other’s hands as Michael went through the office, making sure that the thieves weren’t still there.

  After a moment, he came back. “It looks clear. But they’ve been all through the place.”

  Juliet felt sick. Of course the people who’d killed her husband had been here. They had invaded her home. She should have expected this.

  Cathy pointed. “What was there, in the wall?”

  Juliet looked and saw a large rectangular hole in the wall. “There was a safe there, hidden behind a picture. They gutted it right out.”

  “What did he keep in there?”

  She shrugged. “The proceeds from each day, if they couldn’t get to the bank.”

  “Where was his drug supply closet?”

  Juliet headed down the hall to the closet she knew was there. “He kept samples from the pharmaceutical reps here.”

  She opened the walk-in closet. The shelves were empty. “They got everything. I haven’t been this far into the office in a few months. When I’ve come here, I never go past his office.” She stepped into Bob’s office and saw that it had been ransacked too. Drawers open, files strewn on the desk, others left on the floor.

  She took each blow calmly, like an abuse victim who expected nothing less.

  They went through each examining room until they reached the last two on the left. Juliet opened one of the doors and saw that the room had been turned into someone’s office. A picture of a woman and child sat on the credenza. “Whose office is this?” Cathy asked.

  The woman was pretty and blonde, and the child . . .

  “Why does she have a picture of Abe?” Everyone turned to the picture Holly was studying.

  Juliet took the picture off the shelf. “Wait. That’s not Abe. That must be her baby.”

  “Looks a lot like him, though, right? Spitting image.” Holly’s voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying.

  Juliet turned to her, stricken. Her heart raced, and she put the picture back.

  “Her name’s Amber Williams,” Cathy said, pointing to a nameplate on a file cabinet.

  Juliet tried to think. “I know he hired a new financial secretary about a year ago. He never talked about her.”

  Michael picked up a framed picture of the woman from her file cabinet. She was on a sailboat in a bikini, posing in front of a sign that said “Nassau Marina.”

  “The Bahamas,” Cathy whispered.

  Juliet took the picture, then turned back to the one with the baby. Her stomach plunged, and her heart slammed.

  “What did they take in here?” Michael asked, as though to shift her attention. “Looks like another computer,” he said, pointing to unplugged cords. “Possibly more files. Did Bob have security cameras?”

  “I think so,” Juliet whispered, putting the pictures back.

  Michael disappeared up the hall and quickly returned. “They got the hard drive of the security system. Whoever came in here knew how to disarm it. They covered their tracks, but maybe we’ll get lucky. They might have left prints or other evidence.”

  “How would you be able to tell the intruders’ prints from the patients’?” Holly asked.

  Michael shook his head. “The police can run prints on the security keypad or the computer cords or the areas around the safe and the security system.”

  “I’ll call,” Cathy said.

  They all seemed to turn to Juliet, waiting. But she couldn’t think. Bob may have taken this woman to the Bahamas . . . He may have had an affair that lasted months. The baby . . .

  She couldn’t let her mind follow that path. Not yet.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Yes, call the police.”

  CHAPTER 19

  The more Juliet knew, the darker she felt. She had always been one to find joy in every situation. Depression didn’t often find a resting place in her heart. Even when tragedy struck their family and grief wound its way around her soul, her brain’s need for happiness quickly moved her along. Whether it was wiring or faith, she didn’t know. But that trait that others found so admirable in her had now fled. She wondered if she’d ever feel joy again.

  The boys were brooding when they arrived back at Jay’s house. Juliet went inside, keenly aware that, at a time when they needed her most, she had been pulled away to deal with her dead husband’s mess. It seemed like betrayal. They needed to remember their father’s goodness, and here she was helping dismantle his reputation.

  She was thankful Jay had taken another day off work, so at least they weren’t really alone. Both boys slouched on the couch, looking utterly miserable as Karate Kid played on TV. Abe clung to her after she hugged him, but Zach recoiled from her touch.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been gone for so long.” Her voice sounded distant, foreign, inadequate. “We had to go to your dad’s office to get some things. Then we had to talk to the police again.”

  “Will you stay now?” Abe asked.

  “Yes, honey. I don’t expect to have to go out again today. But I’m going to be in Uncle Jay’s study talking to Michael about some things.”

  Abe whined and asked to come with her, but she put him off. When she, Michael, and her siblings were closed into Jay’s study, she set her hands on her hips. “Michael, I need to look at Bob’s e-mail. Can you access his computer hard drive from here?”

  “No,” he said. “I have it at the office. I’ve already gone through a lot of his office e-mails, but he had a Gmail account for other e-mail. I haven’t made it through those yet. You could get that from here.”


  Juliet sat down at Jay’s computer and opened the Google home page. “Yeah, I know that account. I used it sometimes to send him personal e-mails.”

  She typed in Bob’s e-mail address, and the log-in screen popped up. “If he used the password he used to use . . .” She typed it in, but an “invalid password” message came up. She tried another of his old favorites, but it didn’t work either. She tried to think. Bob didn’t like remembering passwords, so he tended to use the same ones over and over. He’d once used Two2kids, but that was years ago. She tried that one. The ball began spinning, and the messages came up.

  “You got it,” Cathy said, standing beside her.

  “Let’s see what he has from Amber.” She typed the name into the search box. After a few seconds, dozens of e-mails came up in a list. Her throat grew dry. She paused to prepare herself, then scrolled down to the e-mails in May and opened one from Amber after the dates he’d been in the Bahamas.

  Her heart stopped as she read.

  Had a wonderful time last week. You’re spoiling me. Sure you can’t see us this weekend? Robbie misses his daddy.

  Juliet sprang up, knocking over Jay’s penholder.

  Cathy leaned closer and read it out loud.

  Holly’s chin set. “That dirty cheating skunk.”

  Juliet’s heart pounded in her ears. The veins in her temples felt as though they would burst. “ ‘Robbie misses his daddy’?” she rasped out. “He had another child! No wonder that baby looked like Abe. And she named him after Bob!”

  She was falling apart, bit by bit, and she couldn’t seem to catch the pieces. She tried to keep her voice down, but she couldn’t stop the sobs tearing from her throat. “My life was . . . nothing but a lie. All these years . . . he lied to me . . . about everything!”

  Holly tried to put her arms around her, but Juliet shook free.

  Suddenly the doorbell rang. It barely registered. She couldn’t see anybody. Not now.

  “I’ll get it,” Jay said in a soft voice. “Don’t worry. Whoever it is, I’ll tell them it’s not a good time.”

  She stood there, her hands covering her face, as Michael read over the e-mail. “He had another woman,” she said. “He took her to the Bahamas and who knows where else. They had a baby. No wonder he was gone so much! He had another whole family!”

  Cathy and Holly had no words of comfort. They just looked at her, tears in their own eyes. She knew they felt her pain, but they couldn’t understand. No one could.

  Jay came back in. “Juliet, it’s the FBI. Two agents. They want to talk to you.”

  She wanted to scream, put her fist through the wall, smash that computer into a million pieces. But she couldn’t say no to the FBI. She drew in a deep, shaky breath and wiped her face. Cathy handed her a tissue and she blew her nose. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Are you sure?” Jay asked. “Maybe we could ask them to come back a little later.”

  “No, let’s just get this over with.” She said a desperate, silent, angry prayer for strength, then stepped out of the study.

  CHAPTER 20

  Two agents stood in the foyer, waiting to talk to her. One of them was Darren Clement, the one Juliet knew had gone to high school with Bob. He smiled sadly and reached out to hug her. “Juliet, I’m so sorry about Bob.”

  She hadn’t seen Darren in a couple of years—she couldn’t remember whether he’d been at the funeral—but she gave him a hug and accepted his kiss on her cheek. “Are you on the case, Darren?”

  “Yes,” he said. “This is my partner, Special Agent Blue.”

  Juliet turned to the woman and shook her hand. She was smaller than Juliet, but she had a hard edge and a cool look of professionalism. “Nice to meet you,” Juliet said, though it really wasn’t. She turned back to Darren. “I’m surprised they let you work on this case, since you knew Bob. It’s not a conflict of interest?”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t seen him in years, so it’s not a problem. I’m bureau chief of our Panama City office, and this is an important case, so I took it.”

  She wasn’t sure she agreed. An old friend wouldn’t be as likely to assume Bob was a criminal based on the facts they’d uncovered. Part of her was relieved to see a familiar face, but the other part—the part that needed to know the truth—felt slightly uneasy. But she knew Darren to be a professional, and he had been with the FBI for twenty years or more. “Well, it’ll be a little easier to talk to you.” She introduced him to Cathy, making sure he understood that she was her attorney, then introduced Michael, Jay, and Holly. He agreed to allow them to stay for the questioning and to add anything they’d like to.

  But Cathy said, “I’d rather it was just my client and me in the room. You can talk to the others later if you’d like.”

  Juliet nodded and glanced at her siblings and Michael.

  “I’ll just go back to work,” Holly said. “I’ll see you guys later.”

  Michael nodded. “I’ll walk you out. I have things to take care of too.”

  Jay disappeared into the house, and Juliet followed Cathy back into the study. The fact that Cathy was trying to control the situation made her uneasy. Did she fear they were going to arrest her? Or that one of her siblings might say something to implicate her?

  No, of course not. Cathy was just doing what attorneys do—trying to make sure that Juliet’s rights weren’t violated. But Juliet had nothing to hide. She was happy to tell them every single thing she knew. Maybe they could make sense of it. Maybe they would tell her that Bob wasn’t really involved in anything illegal, that it was all a terrible mistake . . .

  But the FBI wouldn’t have taken over the case if it wasn’t big.

  As the agents walked into the study, Juliet started to close the door, but Agent Blue stopped her. “Leave it open, please,” she said.

  Juliet swallowed. Of course. Law enforcement people were paranoid. Closing them into a room would rob them of a little control, wouldn’t it? She just hoped the kids were still playing video games. She’d have to keep her voice low.

  Zach hated being left out. He wasn’t a little kid who would hide under the bed at the thought of danger, like Abe might. He was twelve and he could take it. But the whole family had been talking in code language and locking themselves behind doors to whisper and plan. His mom, who was a wreck, wouldn’t have been gone so much when her kids had just buried their dad unless something even worse than his murder was happening.

  But what could possibly be worse?

  He had tried to listen through doors and walls, but he could never hear more than mumbling. Now there were FBI agents in Uncle Jay’s study, and they were questioning his mom.

  What was up with that?

  Wasn’t the FBI only called in on special cases? Big ones? Maybe they were here now because his dad was an important man. Someone people looked up to. Maybe they knew that he wasn’t just some ordinary dude gunned down on the street, so the big guys were called in.

  But Zach had been there himself when his mother identified the shooter. She had been sure. So why wasn’t the case over? Why couldn’t his family just be left alone?

  He knew the house had been broken into. He had seen the mess and the damage. His family had been destroyed, and now his home had too. They could never go back to the way things were before; they couldn’t even pretend. And now, before they could move back into their house, they’d have to patch walls and floors and replace furniture . . .

  It would be a long time before anything was normal again.

  Even his dad’s office. He’d heard his mom talking about that. She had cut off her words when she saw him, but he was pretty sure that someone had broken in there too. So if that Jerome Henderson guy had done the shooting, and he was in jail, who was doing all these break-ins? And what did they want?

  The whole thing made him sick, but he had to know what was going on.

  Zach went down the stairs and into the foyer. He heard Uncle Jay in the kitchen, and the sounds of Abe’s video game in th
e den. He stole up the hall toward the study, hoping Abe and Jackson didn’t come looking for him.

  He pressed his back against the wall. He could tell that his mother was crying.

  “Max said that Bob was being investigated by the DEA,” she said. “That he might have been involved in the drug trade. I didn’t think that was possible. I still don’t. But things aren’t adding up, and I can’t explain what was going on.”

  The drug trade? Zach caught his breath. His dad involved with drugs? No way. How stupid was that? Heat rushed to his face, and his hands closed into fists. How could his mother say things like that? She knew Dad was a good man, that he would never do anything to hurt anybody. He helped people!

  Zach fought the urge to bust in and defend his dad. He wanted to hear everything.

  “Your husband traveled a lot,” the lady said. “Did you ever go with him?”

  “Not much, not in the last year.” Zach heard a long moment of silence. “But I don’t think he was going alone.” Her voice seemed to crack. “I found e-mails between him and . . . a woman named Amber Williams.” Her voice dropped lower, and Zach strained to hear. “She worked in his office. I think the e-mails indicate that she . . . that he . . .” She couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  Now Cathy spoke up. “The e-mails indicate that they might have had an extramarital relationship. They may have had a child together.”

  Zach pushed off from the wall, almost showing himself through the open doorway. He wasn’t sure what he’d just heard. He didn’t know what an “extramarigold” relationship was. He’d have to google it. But the thing about the child?

  He couldn’t have heard that right.

  “We’re aware of Miss Williams,” the man said.

  “Did you know, Darren? Did you know he had another woman?”

  “No, Juliet, I didn’t. I told you. It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to him.”

  Zach heard his mother blowing her nose, then she said, “Just because he was . . . cheating on me . . . doesn’t mean he was a criminal. That he was involved in something terrible.”